Strength and Power

The past week I've started doing the old three sets of twenty before bed. It's mainly because I haven't worked out in three weeks and I don't want to lose all my strength, although it's clear I have. It's also not about look jacked or tough, but so I have maybe someday will have the ability to do a one-handed handstand haha. Segway into Planet B-Boy.

One-handed anything was a common trick down by many of the B-Boys in the documentary I watched last night called Planet B-Boy. I'm sure you can guess what the subject is about. Break Dancers of course! Everyone has their opinion about breaking/b-boying. A lot of people think it's stupid, silly and I guess rediculous looking. I think it's amazing. These guys are atheletes who have amazing physical strength and skills to be able to jump 6 feet in the air just to land on two hands and do some crazy stall into lets say a headspin. The moves they do are very impressive to me. I'm not so much into syncronized dancing, not at all actually. But when there are "B-Boy Battles" I think it's awesome.

More...(spoilers)
The documentary focused on teams all around the world that represented their repective countries and went to compete at the biggest gathering called "Battle of the Year" i think. That's a stupid name, but so is the term b-boy. Anyways, it focused on a two teams from Korea. The Gamblerz 2002's BotY winner, and Last for One. Korea gets two teams because last years winners automatically gets to return to defend their title. France's team was a name that I can't remember. I didn't like the France team, more on that later. America had Knucklehead Zoo, I didn't like them either, but their name is so stupid I remembered it. More on this later. Japan had a team called.. Ichigaki? Not sure, it was something weird. There were teams all over the world who competed, but these teams were chosen to focus on.

Japan's team was awesome. They were all very happy and very expressive in their breaking. But the same goes for the Korean team, Last for One, who was my favorite out of all the teams. They seemed very innocent and not focused on winning, but just with dancing. One Korean who looked very young said "I'm not dancing to make money, I want to make money to dance."
I thought that was awesome for someone to be so passionate about something that is really looked down upon in Korea. Now don't go saying, "Well, drug dealers are passionate about drug dealing." or "I'm passionate about getting drunk." Of course I have a certain moral bias towards one thing or another. Also, I'm not sure you can be truly passionate about drugs or alchohol because I feel like those things aren't really as respectable. I mean like, it takes a b-boy years to be able to do some of the things he does, while I could just go out and get drunk and it'd be easy? I'm not making sense and I'm just arguing with myself.

The American and France team were the once dancing for the wrong reasons. Wrong being subjective. But the reason they wanted to win was to basically TO win. Now, I guess going into any competition, you want to win. I want to win. But, the days before the competition, the France and US team were hostile towards each other. Not physically and not even verbally because they didn't speak the same language. But they didn't want to be in the same room and they shot glares at each other. One person from the US team said "The French think they're just as badass as we are.". And you could tell, the US had that self imposed "We're the best." and the French had the same attitude, even though they were bashing Americans for that attitude.

Either way, in the end, it came down to Korea (Gamblerz) vs France for third (Korea won, I was glad because the French didn't deserve it) and Korea (Last for One) vs Japan. Last for One took the win for first and I was glad because I favored them. The documentary was good in my opinion and I'd definitely watch it again.


I'm still keeping my eyes wide open for Bang the Machine though.

Back to my original thoughts. I first got into martial arts a long, long time ago because I wanted to be able to fight I guess. I soon realized I was fairly weak but I felt my technique was good. Year later, we started just started training in Lane's Basement. After a while, DH and CP started lifting in his Basement too and somehow we just all decided lifting. I remember saying, "I'll lift for a while to build strength then go back to boxing/kickboxing." and I guess I never really went back. But I'd like to. I enjoy fighting so much more then I do lifting. I do like lifting though. I liked seeing my progess as each week went by and being able to lift more and more. I didn't see much difference in my physical appearance to be honest. Notable my chest. But then I always liked it because if I'm getting stronger, but I still look scrawny, people will underestimate me. But maybe I still look scrawny because I am weak and scrawny? It's weird I a lot of my motivation for physical improvement was fighting someone, even though in my entire life I've never been in a fight. I'm due for one sooner or later.

Some things that sort of turned me off to MMA was the wrestlers at the old gym and UFC. The wrestlers at the gym were assholes. They loved to drink, beat people up (usually undeserving if I heard right) and wrestle I guess. They would act intimidating to new comers to the gym, probably so they knew their place. They just radiated with an "I'm better than you" aura. I don't know, I didn't appreciate it. They were never assholes to me actually. The instructor was sort of the wise cracking tough guy who gave you a hard time in means of teaching you. He was the only wrestler I liked I guess, maybe because he was teacher. Actually, one thing he taught me that I still take with me to this day is keeping my head up when I do push ups. It was after a kickboxing class, and I was doing push ups and he yelled sternly at me three times "Head up, head up, head up!" I didn't know he was talking to me, but when I did realize and I did put my head up while doing push ups he said "Don't be lazy.". So whenever I do push ups, I remember to put my chest to the ground (not resting) and keep my head lookign straight forwards and not towards the ground.

UFC! UFC is flooded with all these idiots who wear UFC/Tapout merch and just thing they're awesome. BASICALLY, the wrestlers from the gym except they only want to learn MMA because it's the cool thing to do.

Anyways, I've been doing the quick three sets of twenty the past week during the night and I'm moving up in sets each night because I've found I've gotten pretty out of shape. Ah well!

Thanksgiving next Thursday. Wish I was being lazy that day, but sometimes it's more work than an actual work day aha. I suppose that's how I feel about most, if not all, family gathering oriented holidays.

I think I need to do some Christmas shopping. Blerg.